Uncle Ray Minniecon is precisely the kind of person in whom Australia should take deep pride.
His grandfather, Private James Lingwoodock, was with the 11th Light Horse Brigade, whose members fought at Gallipoli. He had two brothers in Vietnam, and he himself served for two years as a driver in the CMF.
Three generations of Diggers. But not enough to impress a Neo-Nazi.
Blinded by hate and intolerance, the man started booing when Minniecon began his Anzac Day dawn service Welcome to Country at the Sydney Cenotaph. The man was quickly arrested, but the booing echoed across Australia at Anzac Day commemorations in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
They were orchestrated by the anti-immigration group Fight for Australia, formerly known as March for Australia. They’ve been encouraging supporters to contact RSL branches to ditch Welcome to Country.
Despite the public odour at their Anzac Day actions, they gathered in Melbourne and Canberra on Sunday with Senator Pauline Hanson speaking at their Rally To End Mass Immigration in the national capital.
Australia cannot allow this sort of racist bigotry to shelter behind patriotism. And in the current climate, it may not be too much of a stretch to consider the gunfire outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at Washington’s Hilton Hotel an illustration of what can happen when social cohesion is abused for political purposes.
The Anzac Day booing was, rightly, condemned widely.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said it was disgraceful and deeply disappointing. The federal opposition leader, Angus Taylor, told ABC’s Insiders that booing was “absolutely inappropriate and un-Australian”, but added that he could “understand the frustration Australians feel about over-use of welcomes to country”.
Premier Chris Minns said while he had before heard booing like that at a dawn service, “I’ve also never heard a crowd spontaneously applaud as they did for Uncle Ray Minniecon”.
Minniecon is a descendant of the Kabi nation and the Gureng nation of South-East Queensland and a descendant of the South Sea Islander people with strong connections to his people of Ambrym Island. He helped start the first Coloured Digger ANZAC Day Event in 2007, lobbied for the Yininmadyemi, Thou didst let fall memorial in Hyde Park and has long been behind eradicating the whitewashing of First Nation’s veterans from Australia’s military history.
He is a healing force that, like Anzac Day, creates a better nation.
We may have different views of war and different feelings about the Anzac tradition; however, dawn services are sacrosanct.
The booing is a disturbing symptom of the growing boldness of the nationalistic far right and the division, tension and fear it’s causing within our democracy.
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